Considering AV

[tobyaw]

When the campaigns started a few weeks ago for the AV referendum, I didn’t have a strong view. I vaguely felt that FPTP worked ok, that AV probably wouldn’t make much difference, and that I was glad PR wasn’t an option.

Over the course of the campaign my opinion has hardened, not so much from what the “No to AV” campaign has been saying, or from any love for FPTP, but rather from how I’ve disagreed with much of what the “Yes to AV” campaign has had to say.

My thinking is that parliamentary elections serve two distinct purposes: firstly, for a constituency to select an honest member, true to their beliefs, who will best represent the views of their constituents in parliament, and secondly, for a government to be formed that best represents the will of the country, with a clear mandate to implement a manifesto. This definite statement of policy matters in Westminster elections, where the government has tax-raising and borrowing powers that other elected bodies in the UK don’t have. (When a parliament, assembly, or council merely has spending powers, then I see less need for the clarity of single-party rule.)

I don’t think AV would help achieve these goals. It is claimed that AV would encourage politicians to “work harder” to appeal to all their constituents; I think this means that politics will become even more of a game of presentation, as candidates hide their true nature behind a centrist veneer, and modify their policies to suit their audience. AV will present a more slightly more complex voting process, and significantly more complex counting process; both of which will serve to disengage the electoral from politics. AV will encourage tactical voting, based on party choices rather than individual candidates. I think that there is something deeply unsound about the distribution of second preference votes starting with the least-popular candidates. And AV is viewed by many of its proponents as merely a stepping-stone towards PR, which I believe would do terrible things to the public’s engagement with politics.

(My solution to fixing our electoral system would be to keep FPTP, but to take the party names and slogans off the ballot papers. Let the electorate choose their MP from a list of names and photos. Let voters choose who they want to represent them, rather than which party they prefer. Can’t help thinking that politics would be cleaner and more positive if we diminished the role of parties at the local level.)

Comments

[loupblanc.livejournal.com]

Agree 100% with your last paragraph, the partisanshipanisation (what's the right word anyway?) of choosing representatives of the people shouldn't be based on what club someone paid their membership to but what their propositions and ideas can do to increase the welfare of their voters. I would also like to see more "we've identified problems x, y and z, and this is what we propose to solve it" rather than "the other guy has messed up and here's how we're better and we'll fix it all" (the second part being sometimes optional). This "we're better than the other camp because they've made a mess" is really doing my head in.

Anyway, the main reason I like AV is because right now in FPTP you don't get to say who you _don't_ want elected, and I think that should be an essential part of the democratic process too. I'm not sure how it's counted here, but in French elections when you give a blank vote (ie, an empty envelope) it's not counted towards the final count. So you could have potentially over 50% of the people who bothered turning up to the booth to say I don't like either/any choice and their vote would count for nothing, which I don't find fair and democratic at all.

Also, right now I'm having issues picking a candidate for my constituency. Despite what I said above, I do have a preferred party but it's not represented in the 4 candidates you have to pick for your local MSP so being able to say X would be my first choice but I guess Y would be ok too, though I really don't want Z, in this instance would be helpful for me.

[kateaw]

Back in the old days the party names and slogans were not on the ballot papers.

It meant you had to pay attention at voting time and a political ostrich like me had to work harder. Which, now I'm older and wiser (no laughing at the back there), I know is a good thing.

[hobbitomm.livejournal.com]

I'm slightly amused when you say AV will encourage tactical voting. At present I'm in labour heartland, so my vote is pretty irrelevant anyway, but say it wasn't- I'd have to choose between Liberal, Tory, Green (Not that they stood here last time), BNP or UKIP (Both of whom did). Now, only the liberals stood the slightest remote chance of beating labour (and it was pretty absurdly remote, even last election). Does that compell me to vote liberal, if I want rid of Kevin Jones? At present, yes it does.

AV would give me the option of saying, "Well, I _really_ don't want the BNP to win, so they can go last, and the UKIP just in front of them. My views are such that I'd like to vote Green, but after that Liberal Labour and Tory in that order". That neatly describes my view, and lets my vote be accurately taken into account. I dislike Kevin Jones, but I disliked the UKIP, Tory and BNP candidates even more.

[ggreig]

We totally disagree on the relative merits of PR and FPTP, so I won't go there.

However, I think you may have a slightly rosy view of the value of voting for a person rather than a party. Having grown up in Argyll where "independents" are still the major force in local politics, if not at the national level, I know that voters can find the lack of information about what a candidate's likely to support frustrating, and often feel betrayed by those they've voted in. Party labels may be a caricature, but in practice they seem to be a reasonable indication of what you're going to get (especially with the regrettable lack of candidates willing to vote against their party on individual issues - yes, that is me having my cake and eating it ;-).